Watch out for the videophones: After 30 years of promises, we can now buy telephones that transmit pictures. But the problems caused by out-of-date technology may put us off them for life

By BARRY FOX

‘The time for just talking is over. After years of promise, the age
of the videophone has finally arrived,’ says British Telecom. The idea of
a telephone that displays pictures as well as relaying sound is as old as
science fiction. But the electronics and telecommunications industries believe
that 1993 could be the year when people stop travelling and start using
videophones. Everything is in place: the technology to make the videophone
and the international standards to allow videophones around the world to
talk to each other. And the costs have now reached the point where it is
cheaper for companies to use videophone equipment than to pay for their
executives to travel.

Much as the British postal strikes of the 1980s opened the eyes of small
businesses to the benefits of using the fax instead of the mail, so the
Gulf War created a fear of flying that pushed companies into rethinking
their priorities on travel and conferencing. At the same time, a jigsaw
of new developments in digital technology were changing the rules of the
game.

But for people to change the habits of a lifetime and use videophones
instead of travelling to a meeting for face-to-face discussion, the firms
selling the videophones must present potential customers with a clear concept.
Several announcements appear every week, but most are written in a new jargon,
with no distinction between video conferencing systems, analogue and digital
videophones, and personal computers which double as videophones. Worse still,
the new videophone that British Telecom is launching this month, aimed at
the mass market, could convince the public that videophone …

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